On July 23, the House told President Trump to end the war in Iran for the second time this year. Two hours later, the Senate fell two votes short of making that instruction binding. Both chambers have now registered, by majority sentiment, that this war has gone on long enough. Neither can agree on what to do about that, and fifty years of precedent suggest the Constitution won’t settle the argument for them.
The House passed H. Con. Res. 89, Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s (D-Wash.) nonbinding resolution directing the president to remove U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran, 214-208 — the second time the chamber has passed similar language this year. Four Republicans crossed over: Tom Barrett (Mich.), Warren Davidson (Ohio), Thomas Massie (Ky.), and Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.). The rest of the GOP conference voted no.
The Senate vote carried actual consequences. Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-Md.) S.J. Res. 180 needed a simple majority just to be discharged from the Foreign Relations Committee and forced to the floor. It got 47 votes. It needed 49. The crossover ran both directions: Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) voted to discharge it, and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) voted against. Four senators didn’t vote at all — Katie Britt, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul.
A nonbinding resolution carries no legal weight; it’s a formal, on-the-record head count. The binding one needed two more votes to even get debated. Neither changed anything about what’s happening in Iran right now.
The U.S. and Israel opened this phase of the conflict on February 28, when Trump ordered airstrikes on Iranian targets under the name Operation Epic Fury, after Tehran refused to end uranium enrichment. It followed U.S. strikes on Iran’s Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear sites the previous June, which a Pentagon assessment found had set the program back roughly two years.
Iran responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz on March 4, cutting off a route that carries roughly 27% of the world’s seaborne crude and refined fuel. The International Energy Agency called it the largest supply disruption in the oil market’s history. U.S. gas prices, around $2.93 a gallon in February, were above $3.70 by mid-March.
In June, Trump announced a memorandum of understanding with Iran and declared the war over: “they have agreed never to have a nuclear weapon.” Less than a month later, he called the MOU “over.” On July 10, he formally notified Congress that hostilities had resumed. That weekend, an Iranian strike on a U.S. base in Jordan killed three American troops; a fourth died in Iraq during what was described as a controlled detonation of an unexploded Iranian drone. Brent crude, which spiked past $120 a barrel after the Hormuz closure, was trading around $94 by late July — still elevated, still moving with the news out of the region.
The Constitution splits war power in two: Congress declares war, the president commands the military once it’s declared. The War Powers Resolution of 1973, passed over Nixon’s veto as Vietnam wound down, was Congress’s attempt to make that split mean something — presidents must notify Congress within 48 hours of committing forces to hostilities, and withdraw within 60 days absent congressional authorization.
In fifty years, that clock has almost never actually stopped a war. Obama’s 2011 Libya campaign ran past it on the argument that airstrikes without ground troops didn’t count as the “hostilities” the law covers. The one time a War Powers Resolution passed both chambers — in 2019, to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen — Trump vetoed it, and the veto held. This year’s fight is playing out inside that same pattern: Congress registers its objection, and the executive branch decides whether the clock applies to it at all.
Jayapal called her resolution’s passage “a big victory for the vast majority of the American people who want President Trump to end this illegal war and focus on their lives right here at home,” and said the war has “no clear mission, no strategy, no end goal.” Van Hollen was blunter on the floor: “This is a strategic blunder on a massive scale… Let us stop pretending that Congress has no role to play while American service members remain in harm’s way.”
The argument underneath: Article I gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war, and five months of undeclared combat with mounting American casualties and no stated exit condition is exactly what the framers meant to prevent. Add gas prices still running nearly a dollar higher than in February, and the case is that ordinary Americans are absorbing the cost of a war their representatives never voted to authorize.
Trump’s position is that hostilities have effectively “terminated” by his own account, which he argues means the 60-day clock no longer applies — while separately maintaining that “the threat posed by Iran to the United States and our Armed Forces remains significant.” Speaker Mike Johnson has said, “I don’t think an AUMF is in order right now,” adding that “the commander-in-chief and the whole Department of War are working very hard to bring this to a resolution.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune has declined to schedule an authorization vote, though he’s told the White House it needs more outreach and briefings to keep the conference on board.
Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-Fla.) put the sharper version on the floor: “To belittle this mission is to belittle and demean the very service these members gave their life for.” The broader case: Iran’s nuclear program is a real, unresolved threat; presidents have managed fast-moving military situations without a fresh congressional vote for decades (Libya, and the original 2025 strikes); and a formal authorization fight right now would mostly relitigate the war’s wisdom in public, in the middle of an active conflict — a signal of division to send to Tehran, not clarity.
Nothing changes operationally from either vote. The House resolution has no enforcement mechanism. The Senate’s binding version didn’t reach the floor. Even if it eventually does, Trump can veto it, and the Yemen precedent suggests an override is unlikely — that takes two-thirds of both chambers, a bar neither the 214-208 House vote nor the 47-49 Senate vote comes close to clearing.
What doesn’t wait on any of this: gas prices tied to a Strait of Hormuz that opens and closes with the news cycle, and a casualty count that grew by four names in one weekend. Congress will likely vote on this again — Jayapal’s resolution was already a repeat — and the outcome each time will depend less on the Constitution’s text than on how many members of the president’s own party are willing to cross over.
Congress didn’t decide whether this war should continue. It decided, again, that it can register disapproval without being able to stop anything. The Constitution says Congress declares war. Fifty years of practice say the president decides when that clock starts — and when it doesn’t apply at all.
Irons traces how war-making authority migrated from Congress to the Oval Office across two centuries — long before this particular fight. It’s the strongest version of the case Van Hollen and Jayapal are making on the floor: that the drift itself, not any one president, is the constitutional problem worth fixing.
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